TWAA founder Irene Kiwia
Bureau Veritas, a global testing, inspection, and certification company, has announced the launch of its “BV Women in Africa Mentorship Program” a strategic collaborative partnership with TWAA, a global and professional networking, knowledge sharing and mentorship platform for women and girls.
The platform provides women with digital tools to connect and find suitable mentors and mentees, share and access opportunities bolstering continuous progress and development.
Speaking at the launch of the program in Nairobi on 4 November, Marc Roussel, President of Government Services & International Trade & Senior Vice President for Africa commented: “The Bureau Veritas Group operates in several countries across Africa. The organisation has a very strong ethos on gender balance and women empowerment. The TWAA initiative enables us to engage women in supporting each other through a BV dedicated mentorship program. This platform creates a unique opportunity to invite many of the great women of BV to support other women within Africa. The digital tool is an incredible means to reach out to many women even if they are located remotely.
“This initiative will contribute positively to the social compact and development within the African continent and it is my fervent hope that other companies will come on board and support this program,” he added.
Said Irene Kiwia, Founder of TWAA: “We are thrilled to partner with Bureau Veritas to promote TWAA across Africa and globally. This platform was built to help organisations with a strong women empowerment agenda such as Bureau Veritas accomplish their goals by providing a platform to engage, connect, mobilise and impact their women communities through mentorship, knowledge sharing and access to opportunities. TWAA provides a safe and private space with relevant digital tools for women to thrive and aims to bridge the gender digital divide which can be ramped up if organisations globally become the drivers of the platform.”
The program is available in English, French and Swahili and in the future will be available in even more languages like Yoruba, isiZulu, Portuguese and Arabic.
Bureau Veritas enjoys a strong gender social awareness ethos, with the company launching the Ithemba Trust in South Africa in 2019, a women’s empowerment body involved in projects benefiting girls and young women in South Africa.
TWAA is available as a web portal via https://www.twaa.io with soon to be launched mobile apps.
About The Author: Samantha
Samantha Perry is the owner and founder of SJ Perry PR, a small, independent agency that specialises in providing public relations and media relations services to small to medium-sized businesses. She recently served as the JHB Agency Lead for Irvine Partners, an integrated public relations and marketing agency. She has over 20 years' of experience writing for a range of media - print and online - mainly in the ICT sector including Computing SA (editor), ComputerWeek, and Brainstorm magazine (editor). In her capacity as a PR professional and consultant, she has and does work with a variety of companies including Google (South Africa & Nigeria), Salesforce, CLEVVA, Euphoria Telecom, Paymenow and Tiger Content (UK). She also has a Masters degree in ICT Policy & Regulation. She served on the IAB SA Marketing Council as the PR rep, has worked as an independent telecoms researcher for some of the analyst houses in that field and was regularly called upon to comment on telecoms issues in the press. Nowadays she can be found commenting on women in tech issues in the press and speaking at conferences on the subject and the issues women in the sector face.
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